hi everyone,

today i installed slackware 9, determined to overcome all
problems i came across, since if others can do it, i should
be able to as well.

it installed fine, though had some problems... dmesg
revealed the following problems:

...
FAT: bogus logical sector size 0
UMSDOS: msdos_read_super failed, mount aborted.
FAT: bogus logical sector size 0
FAT: bogus logical sector size 0
...
8139cp: 10/100 PCI Ethernet driver v0.3.0 (Sep 29, 2002)
8139cp: 10/100 PCI Ethernet driver v0.3.0 (Sep 29, 2002)
8139cp: 10/100 PCI Ethernet driver v0.3.0 (Sep 29, 2002)
8139cp: 10/100 PCI Ethernet driver v0.3.0 (Sep 29, 2002)
8139cp: 10/100 PCI Ethernet driver v0.3.0 (Sep 29, 2002)
8139cp: 10/100 PCI Ethernet driver v0.3.0 (Sep 29, 2002)
8139cp: 10/100 PCI Ethernet driver v0.3.0 (Sep 29, 2002)
8139cp: 10/100 PCI Ethernet driver v0.3.0 (Sep 29, 2002)
8139cp: 10/100 PCI Ethernet driver v0.3.0 (Sep 29, 2002)
8139cp: 10/100 PCI Ethernet driver v0.3.0 (Sep 29, 2002)
8139cp: 10/100 PCI Ethernet driver v0.3.0 (Sep 29, 2002)
...

there were no error messages apart from those; especially
the multiple loading of a network card module strikes me as
very odd and i would gladly hear of a way to disable those
modules from loading. what more is strange, is that my
network card uses the 8139too module, and not the 8139cp
one, which appears to be loaded here.

as for the umsdos error ; i have not fat partitions anywhere;
so why is slackware even doing anything with that?

oh... and i almost forgot to put in my current most annoying
problem. i run dropline gnome, and for some reason, X uses
a lot of CPU (goes from almost nothing to approx 100%) now
and then; often when i right-click the desktop. i have no idea
why this happens...

any suggestions or ideas are appreciated; if i need to provide
more info, please tell me to do so.

Kernel modules are loaded from /etc/modules, you may have 8139cp and umsdos listed in there. If so remove them and that will stop them from loading at boot.

As for X, I don't think its related specifically to X or GNOME. Keep open a terminal with top running sorted by CPU usage (press P in top) and see what is causing it, then find a way to prevent it.

i have no etc/modules

/etc/rc.d/rc.modules


Cheers,
Tink

thank you kindly tinkster.

that file i could indeed find. however, i found no reference to
the network modules being loaded that many times.

also, i noticed the agp module not being loaded, while i
have an agp gfx card; i uncommented it and slackware
boots just fine; i wonder what the module is for.. hmmz. i'll
try to find info on it. perhaps it's something outdated.

ok.. i just downloaded the new 4349 nvidia drivers,
installed them from the tars instead of the non-working
script and it seems the problem of X using a lot of CPU
is gone. hurray :) (i can say nothing performance wise
yet).

in short how i updated:

1. download these:

glx
kernel

2. extract them, go to a terminal (i exited my wm)
3. go to the kernel-dir, and do a 'make install'
4. go to the glx-dir, and do a 'make install'
5. run startx and presto. done.

i hope it goes as easy for you as it went for me.

kind regards.